THEE RANT

Saturday, August 22, 2009

A Brooklyn man was shot in the head and killed after a wild melee broke out on a dangerously overcrowded Lower Manhattan party boat early today at the South Street Seaport.

Omar Trent, 31, of Flatbush, was shot in a parking lot near the boat as the crowd spilled off the vessel in the predawn hours, sources said.

The 4 a.m. shooting was the culmination of a raucous night of drinking and partying that devolved into a nasty brawl by young crowd of several hundred people that swamped the vessel, which never left the dock, according to the crew.

The boat was supposed to set sail at 1 a.m. for a night of fun on the water, but the ship didn't go out because there were too many people on board, workers said.

The fighting was so bad that at one point boat worker Perry Rumnit, 40, locked himself, his co-workers and some passengers in the ships kitchen to escape the fighting.